


and the songbirds keep singing like they know the score

by Maculategiraffe



Series: How Life Goes On, The Way It Does [17]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: F/M, Multi, all the kids too, and a baby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-18 18:21:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29122593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maculategiraffe/pseuds/Maculategiraffe
Summary: written (somewhat) to an anonymous prompt on tumblr, asking how things have been going with the Bowmans. stupid fluffy(really doesn't stand on its own, imo; if you haven't read the rest of the series, consider doing so first!)
Relationships: John Hancock/Female Sole Survivor
Series: How Life Goes On, The Way It Does [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/456004
Comments: 12
Kudos: 40





	and the songbirds keep singing like they know the score

**Author's Note:**

> ([Fleetwood Mac, "Songbird"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTi19MPOvDw))
> 
> (also, [Margaret Wise Brown, _The Color Kittens_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBFGutjPwH0))

"You ever think you'd be a grandfather?"

"Hold up," says Hancock to Nora, who's tucked into the crook of his arm, her voice low next to what's left of his ear. "This is the best part."

"And as they slept, they dreamed their dream," Emily reads. "A wonderful dream, of a red rose tree, that turned all white when you counted three."

"One," says Max.

"Two," says Elizabeth, who looks half asleep, her head on Dee's shoulder, but not sleepy enough to miss her cue.

Dee says, after a suitably dramatic pause, "Three," and Emily turns the page, to the picture of the white rose tree, the little gray kittens in overalls on either side of a little brown bear, clutching its paws, gazing up at the tree. Nathanael makes a noise, halfway between a grunt and a coo, and lunges against Max's hands where they're laced together across his fat little tummy, grabbing for the book that Emily holds just out of reach.

Emily smiles at her nephew, reads, "Of a purple land in a pale pink sea, where apples fell from a golden tree--"

"Go," says Nathanael, and Max says, "That's right, _golden_. A _golden_ tree."

"Kit," says Nathanael, grabbing for the book again, and Emily reads, "And then a world of Easter eggs, that danced about on little short legs."

"Egg," says Nathanael, gazing at the picture.

"No," says Hancock, quietly, to his wife, as Emily keeps reading. "Can't say I did."

They're all in the library; there's something about this evening ritual that all the synths seem to find compelling, even Victoria and X6, who don't otherwise seem all that interested in the baby. Others take their turns reading aloud to him-- different books, raided from the Boston Public Library, _The Snowy Day_ and _The Little House_ and _Jamberry_ and _Chicken Soup with Rice_ and _Alexander and the Wind-up Mouse_ and _Make Way for Ducklings_ , which actually takes place in prewar Boston-- but whoever else reads and whatever they read, Emily always reads _The Color Kittens_ , and barring extraordinary circumstances, all of Nora's children gather in the library at least long enough to listen.

Hancock could recite the book alongside Emily by now, but he still listens-- nobody reads poetry like Emily--

"They crawled out of bed into a bright, bright world," she says, as if she's seeing the bright, bright world for the first time herself: being led, by her mother's hand, into the light. "The sky was wild with sunshine." 

Max shifts Nathanael's weight in his arms, turns the baby to face him, as Emily reads, "The kittens were wild with purring and pouncing."

"Pounce," says Max, and leans down, and kisses his son's head, and then stands, from where he's sitting next to Emily, and brings him to his mother.

"Pounce," says Elizabeth, and kisses Nathanael's fat little cheek.

Dee holds out his arms, and Max hands the baby over, and Dee folds Nathanael against him, presses his cheek against the baby's head, says, almost inaudibly, "Pounce."

Emily, a smile in her voice, reads, "They got _so_ pouncy they knocked over the buckets, and the colors ran together. There were all the colors in the world, and the color kittens had made them."

Max, standing behind Dee and Elizabeth now, puts his hand on Dee's shoulder. Dee's hair, like Nathanael's, is bright in the lamplight, almost the same brightness, despite the streaks of gray in Dee's. As the book says: _Orange as an orange tree. Orange as a bumblebee._

"Thanks, Emily," Max says. 

"My pleasure," says Emily.

Shaun, leaning against Leah, his own book in his lap, says, "Mom's asleep."

"No I'm not," says Nora, drowsily, at his side.

Emily says, to Hancock, "You should get her to bed."

He looks up at her, suddenly remembering her white face in the moonlight as she shook him from a dead sleep-- _Mr. Hancock, please, sir_ \-- and dragged him by the withered hand, out into the tatoes, to the heart-stopping sight of Nora crumpled in the dirt, face down and reeking of bourbon. She'd have laid there all night, if it hadn't been for Emily; he'd drunk too much himself to have noticed. Little Ruby, little Y4-15: flushed now with the heat of all her siblings crowded into one room, smiling at him.

"She's right, mother," says Michael, from where he sits by Danse, Sierra pressed against Danse's other side. "You should go to bed. Don't worry about checking the perimeter. X6 and I will do it."

"Twist my arm," says Nora, over a yawn. "Where's my baby?"

"Here," says Max, standing by Dee, who's still cradling Nathanael against his chest.

Hancock stands up, offers his hand, and Nora lets herself be pulled to her feet, and walks a little unsteadily-- not drunk now, except with sleepy contentment-- over to Dee, who lifts the baby towards her, says, "Kiss Granny Bullseye good night."

Nora leans down and kisses Nathanael between his little orange eyebrows, and he says, "Nur."

"That's right," says Nora. "I'm Nora. Don't listen to your daddy. He doesn't even know his _own_ name."

"Dada," says Nathanael, as Dee puts him back on his shoulder. "Dadadadadadadada."

" _Somebody_ sure knows his name," says Max, grinning.

"Good night, everybody," says Nora, putting an arm around Hancock's waist and leaning lightly against him, and there's a murmur around the library: _good night, mother, good night, Nora, night Glinda, night mom, good night, ma'am, good night._

"Night," says Nathanael. "Night, night."

Out on the moonlit Cambridge street, Nora yawns again, as he steers her towards their house. 

"That baby," she says, and Hancock says, "He's pretty great."

"I love him so much," says Nora. "And he's so precious and perfect the way he is now, but I can't wait for him to get older, too, you know? I can't wait to-- keep meeting him."

"I feel that way about all your kids," says Hancock, and Nora says, "Oh, yes," and then, laughing, "Even Dee?"

"Dee helped make little Nate," says Hancock. "So I guess he can stay."

He pushes open the door of their house. He knows his way in the darkness, to the bed they share; he eases her down onto the edge of it, kneels down at her feet to unlace her boots.

"Look at you," she says, in that slow, sweet voice of hers, her edge-of-sleep voice, and bends to him, lays her hands on him, one on his shoulder, one cupping his withered cheek. "My love."

He lifts his eyes to her face, tired and beautiful in the faint moonlight, looking down at him like he's beautiful, too. He'll never understand that look, how she can gaze at him and see anything but a wreck, a ruin. But then, she never knew him before, when he was good-looking, arrogant, careless John McDonogh. 

He doesn't think she would have liked John McDonogh much. 

He gets her boots off, and then his own, and then she's pulling him down onto the bed beside her, and her lips are on his mouth. She's too tired for it to be a come-on; it's a kiss good night, from his wife. She wraps herself around him, lays her head on his chest.

Like being John Hancock, like being mayor of Goodneighbor, like being Nora's traveling companion, and then her lover, and then her husband, he doesn't really know how this happened. He reached out for something to save him, something to help him bear the burden of living, something to make him into a person he could stand to be, and somehow he got here. Here, in the circle of his wife's arms, in this house built for her and for him, in this town full of her children, and his. In John Hancock's coat, worn threadbare now, but still warmer against his skin ever since Nora used it, that one day, to wrap their shivering daughter in, to bring her home.

"I can hear your heart," she murmurs, and then, after a little while, her breathing evens out, deepens, and he knows she's asleep.

In the morning, the sky will be wild with sunshine.


End file.
